Gold has been used for connectors in electronic computational devices due to its good electrical and thermal conductivities. Its excellent oxidation resistance in most environments is also a key property, and another reason why the electronic computational industry selects gold as a conductor. As electronic devices are driven smaller and smaller, gold's properties become even more important. Consequently, gold nanoparticles could become one of the key elements in manufacturing nano-scale devices. Currently, gold nanoparticles have also been used as tags in biological research.
Several approaches have been made to generate gold nanoparticles. Gold nanoparticles were generated by reduction of gold complex ions in gold salt solution with NaBH4, in the presence of dendrimers (Esumi et al., 2000; Grohn et al., 2001) or with sugar balls (Esumi et al., 2000). Ultraviolet irradiation of Langmuir-Blodgett films of octadecylamine, 4-hexadecylaniline and benzyldimethylstearylammonium chloride monohydrate deposited from aqueous HAuCl4 subphases was tested to generate gold nanoparticles. (Ravaine et al., 1998). Cai et al. (1998) investigated the generation of gold nanoparticles by laser ablation of gold microparticles. These approaches are expensive and often involve pollution-generating processes.